Spectators gather for the first Bands on the Bricks concert of the summer season on Pearl Street, Boulder’s hip home for shopping and dining. Two people stop passersby with samples of Cliff trail-mix bars, and down the block, there’s a row of bikes that visitors and residents can rent to explore the city.

Boulder is nearly a thousand miles from Rockford and, some might say, light years ahead of our community in terms of good health. The city of 103,000 residents ranked No. 2 this year on Gallup-Healthways’ ranking of Top 10 Midsize Communities for Well-Being.

Rockford ranked 176th in the overall community rankings.

Transform Rockford officials tried to bridge some of the distance between Boulder and Rockford by looking to the city for its “well-being” best practices, particularly in access to health care, obesity, homelessness, abuse and neglect, spiritual diversity, health, smoking and water quality.

“The city is proactive about the well-being of its residents,” said Mark West, a Transform Rockford committee member who compiled some initial statistics comparing Boulder and Rockford.

“Laws and ordinances are made to protect the interest of every citizen. One trap that is easy to fall into is to disqualify Rockford from attaining the same success as Boulder because we don’t have a major university, but the provisions they make in the area of health and well-being are not targeted at a facility. They are targeted toward the people, and Rockford has people, too.

“Rockford is its people. If we ever want to be able to reach our goal and sustain ourselves as a top-25 city, we must begin acting like one right now, and we cannot be a happy city without first being a healthy city.”

Key differences

It’s true that Rockford doesn’t have the beautiful Flatirons, a cluster of rock formations that visitors flock to for hiking and biking near the Colorado Chautauqua, with its lodging, dining and entertainment. Drivers can wind their way up along the twisty Flagstaff Road — part of which was damaged by major flooding last fall — to get a glimpse of Boulder from high above.

Page 2 of 9 - Rockford, though home to several institutions of higher education, also doesn’t have the University of Colorado at Boulder, home to nearly 32,000 students.

Part of Boulder’s healthy culture centers on sustainability efforts. In 1967, residents voted to establish a tax to buy and maintain open space, which enhances the opportunities for recreation and active lifestyles. The city owns 45,000 acres that can’t be developed, which is also why housing costs and land prices are so expensive — they’re at a premium.

The median value of owner-occupied housing units from 2008 to 2012 was $489,000 in Boulder and $106,000 in Rockford, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Olympic runners and cyclists train in Boulder because of the elevation and the healthy nature of the community. Better-educated and better-paid people move here because of the healthy infrastructure.

“I do think, in general, the environment helps support people,” said Rachel Arndt, an environmental health planner with the Boulder County Public Health Department. “There’s a peer pressure to almost buy into the lifestyle.”

You’ll often hear Rockford health officials cite the social determinants of health and how they contribute to an unhealthy community. Our residents overall are less-educated and make less money. The metro area finally dipped below 10 percent unemployment in April for the first time since before the Great Recession. Boulder’s unemployment rate was 4.1 percent as of April.

People who are poor and not working have less access to healthy foods or make buying them less of a priority. Crime prevents people from taking walks and exercising in their own neighborhoods.

In Boulder, 71.3 percent of the population 25 and older has bachelor’s degrees, compared with 20.7 percent in Rockford.

But Boulder isn’t perfect.

Boulder County officials have made increasing healthy eating and active living, improving mental health and reducing substance abuse as three of its main focuses for public improvement. Chronic diseases, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, are still leading causes of mortality and morbidity in the county.

Health officials are the first to admit that there’s no silver bullet to being a model for health and well-being. But history and the forward-thinking nature of its residents and leaders are on their side.

Investing in recreation

The city bought its first piece of land, about 80 acres at the base of Flagstaff Mountain, in 1898 for use as one of several Chautauqua cultural centers across the country, according to the Open Space and Mountain Parks Department.

The city has acquired more than 400 separate properties since then. The program is 92 percent funded by sales and use-tax dollars, and 88 cents of every dollar spent on retail products in Boulder helps support continued acquisition, protecting the land and preserving it.

Page 3 of 9 - Boulder is a platinum-level Bicycle Friendly Community, a distinction awarded by the League of American Bicyclists. The honor is applied to communities that have safe and convenient places to ride and park, offer opportunities to people of all ages to learn about cycling, create a “strong bike culture,” ensure safety on the roads and plan for cycling as a “viable transportation option.”

According to the health department’s research, 65 percent of people are interested in biking and walking more, but safety gives them pause. Arndt said the city is piloting segregated bike lanes that improve the safety of intersections and crossings.

“Even though (biking) is really accessible here, we still see a high percentage of riders being men, and most of them have Spandex on. You don’t see as many riders who are riding to work or cycling for different reasons. We want to put the focus more on the average person, the mom running an errand and convincing her that biking or walking is an option.”

Bike lanes are painted green in some places, and there’s more back-angled parking so drivers can see bikers better. More crosswalks are marked with signs that say “oncoming traffic may not stop,” just in case. Some traffic signals include red and green bike symbols to make drivers more aware of bikers nearby.

The department is working with the city of Lafayette (population 26,800), about 12 miles from Boulder, to do walking audits, which are walking paths around an area that are identified as easy-to-navigate and safe. Officials will walk with residents to see how they perceive the route, collect data about the walkers and get their feedback on where to make capital improvements.

“Public safety has to come first before people can think about health,” said Summer Laws, the department’s public health improvement coordinator.

Boulder also has Boulder B-cycle, a bike-sharing program that launched in 2011. More than 30,000 riders used B-cycles in 2013, according to the group’s annual report. Riders can buy annual, seven-day or 24-hour passes for the bikes.

Arndt said physicians in U.S. cities such as Boston are writing prescriptions for bike-sharing programs, which qualify low-income residents for program memberships that cost as little as $5 and come with free helmets. Boulder’s program offers reduced rates for low-income residents, but there still needs to be a person backing the purchase with a credit card in case the bike isn’t returned. That’s an opportunity for private investors and sponsors to align their help with such a program, Arndt said.

Community buy-in

Page 4 of 9 - Boulder County health officials emphasized the importance of community input in developing the direction of health programming and outreach.

“The community has to decide and be that driving force,” said Chana Goussetis, the department’s communications and marketing manager.

For instance, the city of Longmont (population 88,669), which is about 15 miles northeast of Boulder, has its own Bicycle Longmont program to encourage cycling and LiveWell Longmont, which has its own goals for healthy eating and active living.

Within the county’s category goal of increasing healthy eating and active living is improving the health and reducing obesity of children through age 17.

One of the Health Department’s leadership teams is honing in on early-childhood programming. A Child Health Promotion Team certifies child-care centers as “5-2-1-0” facilities: a minimum of eating five fruits and vegetables a day, no more than two hours of screen time on a TV or mobile device, one hour minimum of physical activity a day, and consuming zero sugary drinks.

“That impacts families,” Goussetis said. “It’s a policy within a center, but it changes what the parents are bringing in for birthday parties, what’s happening at home. There’s an increased awareness. If you do a few of these things, it begins to impact the community.”

Food and business

One of the most popular tourist stops in Boulder is Celestial Seasonings, founded in 1969 in Boulder and located — naturally — on Sleepytime Drive. Sleepytime teas are one of the company’s most popular products.

Visitors can sample several teas before settling in for a short movie about Celestial’s founders and history. Then, once your hairnet is in place, you explore where the tea is blended, packaged, stored and shipped.

The comforting smell of tea wafts through the place, scented slightly differently depending on the flavor of tea being milled that day. One of the most memorable stops on the tour is the peppermint room. The strong scent of peppermint and spearmint nearly knock you over upon entering. Because of their strong scent, these teas must be stored separately.

Celestial’s long history in the community helped lay the foundation for Boulder’s expansive organic and natural foods industry. It’s one of the city’s top job-providers, alongside aerospace, bioscience, data storage, renewable energy, software, tourism and outdoor recreation, according to the Boulder Economic Development Council.

A 10-year-old trade association, Naturally Boulder, advocates for the industry and has nearly 800 members. A study spearheaded by the group in 2011 said the natural and organic products industry in the region employs about 8,300 people and produced sales of about $490 million.

Page 5 of 9 - “What we have learned over the years is part of what makes Boulder work is yes, the university, but the environmental and progressive values are attractive to people, and many of those people are the kind of entrepreneurs and creators really built into this industry,” said Clif Harald, a board member for the group and executive director of the economic council.

“We had interesting people exploring alternative lifestyle choices in the ’60s and ’70s, and now we have this industry. At the time, it wasn’t viewed like that. This is a beautiful place with some certain sets of values that people who care about health foods and lifestyle gravitated toward, and it grew out of that.”

The city of Boulder does offer some “modest” incentives — Harald cited numbers in the $20,000 to $70,000 range to help companies expand and stay — to organic and natural foods businesses, but mainly in an effort to grow businesses already here.

Data about income and jobs are harder to come by for the outdoor recreation industry. Business and industry leaders recently formed Active Boulder to increase advocacy and outreach.

Big food scene

Boulder is also a foodie’s paradise.

Livability ranked Boulder No. 7 on its 2014 Top 10 Foodie Cities list. USA Today called it one of Six Small Cities with Big Food Scenes. The lists go on.

Lenny and Sara Martinelli are big drivers of that scene. They own seven restaurants in the area, a catering company, a tea company and Three Leaf Farm.

Last year, they reopened the historic Chautauqua Dining Hall after renovating the space and reworking the menu. Diners can sit on a wrap-around porch for a gorgeous view of the mountains while dining on an eclectic menu that features organic-food selections.

Martinelli is as passionate about food and farming as he is about composting and recycling. Food waste from the restaurants is mixed with manure from goats, chickens and horses at the farm and reused for the property.

And while Boulder has a healthier reputation than most U.S. cities, Martinelli’s business model is not unique to the city.

“My idea is not necessarily about trying to drive this health thing, even though we are doing organic produce, so that’s sort of a byproduct of it,” he said. “I don’t think Boulder makes it easier to do or more logical to do it. I think everywhere can do it.

Page 6 of 9 - “I believe what makes Boulder healthy is, we do foster a big farm-to-table culture. It’s sort of an important thing now for our community. It’s sort of built that way. It wasn’t always like that, though. Ten years ago it wasn’t like that. Seven years ago it wasn’t like that. But it’s just a good way.”

Choices Natural Market in Rockford specializes in natural and organic products, and Woodman’s Market more than doubled its selection of those products and gluten-free items last year. A petition popped up online to bring a Trader Joe’s to Rockford after Schnuck Markets Inc. closed its grocery on Rural Street, but the company said the city isn’t in it’s two-year plan for store openings.

Alfalfa’s is a locally owned grocer that opened a 40,000-square-foot building with 20,000 square feet of retail space in 2011 near the University of Colorado campus. The company was founded in 1979 as Pearl Street Market, grew to be a leading natural-products retailer with 11 stores and was acquired in 1996 by Wild Oats Markets.

One of the original founders resurrected the business at the same location where the first store opened in 1983. Dale Kamibayashi was also the manager of the first store when it opened.

Ninety percent of Alfalfa’s produce is organic. Shoppers can buy bottles to fill and refill with organic oils and vinegars. A prepared-foods area with hot and cold foods, a bakery, and soup, sushi and juice bars offer food and beverage choices that are organic, natural, gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan.

The store supports more than 250 vendors, and hundreds of those products were tagged as “local” last month to celebrate that community connection.

“One of our focuses is to be very community centric,” Kamibayashi said. “We have to do that with the products we carry, the nonprofits we support. We have a community room upstairs that we offer the public to use for free as long as they can provide that they’re a nonprofit or something of that nature.”

Page 7 of 9 - The Boulder market is competitive in natural and organic product offerings, yet Alfalfa’s business is booming, he said. In June it opened a store in Louisville (population 19,588), about 11 miles southeast of Boulder.

Lighting a fire

Boulder was one of the first U.S. cities to receive money for tobacco prevention assistance nearly 20 years ago, said Jennifer Kovarik, program coordinator for the health department’s Community Health Division Tobacco Education & Prevention Partnership.

The Colorado Clean Indoor Air Act of 2006 effectively bans smoking in most indoor spaces, with a few exceptions. Boulder has stricter rules than the state regarding patios and outdoor event spaces. Smoking also must be 15 feet from any entryway or openable window instead of just 15 feet from a main entrance.

City officials moved to strengthen outdoor smoking laws in recent years. Downtown Boulder Inc., a nonprofit business preservation and enhancement group, surveyed businesses and vendors about smoking. Then government and health officials sought public feedback about the issue.

A city ordinance enacted in 2013 bans all smoking between 11th and 15th streets on the Pearl Street Mall and on the lawn of the Boulder County Courthouse.

People still smoke on the mall, particularly out-of-town visitors who don’t know about the law, said Whitney Oftedahl, spokeswoman for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, a partner in the smoke-free efforts. Kovarik said law enforcement officials have issued some — as in dozens, probably less than 100 — tickets.

“Often, our work is about raising the bar and asking people to come up to that level of expectation, and some people can’t immediately get there,” Kovarik said. “We treat tobacco dependence as a chronic disease.

“When we look to some of our big successes, it really is a long history of a lot of education and really engaged, interested community.”

City and county officials are actually using Chicago as a model for signage regarding education about indoor use of electronic cigarettes. Chicago’s signs use the traditional “do-not” logo — a circle with a diagonal line over a cigarette — but adds a lightning bolt to represent e-cigarettes.

The University of Colorado is phasing out its designated smoking areas this summer, which includes cigarettes, electronic cigarettes and marijuana (although it’s already illegal to smoke marijuana in public).

About 11.5 percent of Boulder’s residents are smokers, but the city is still a test market for novelty tobacco products, such as Camel Orbs, which are dissolvable tablets with finely ground tobacco mixed with food additives. About 23 percent of adults in Winnebago County are smokers.

“They’re marketed as healthier alternatives, and the thought is, if (a product) will pick up in Colorado, it will pick up anywhere,” Kovarik said. “Our community faces many of the same industry pressure. We talk about, ‘well, we’re of a healthier mind-set,’ but sometimes that is often twisted by the industry to push different products. Although we may not sell as many packs of Newports, we’re a great community for selling e-cigarettes and dissolvables and things perceived to be healthier.

Page 8 of 9 - “We love novelty and technology.”

Pot policy

Colorado also loves its marijuana, which became available this year for legal recreational use. Regulating marijuana use is a new challenge for government and health officials, but sales are booming: Recreational marijuana sales taxes amounted to $11 million from January through April, according to the Colorado Department of Revenue.

Medical marijuana became legal in January in Illinois, although the state is finalizing rules and regulations regarding sales and growth. Business licenses for dispensaries and cultivation centers are expected to be available this summer, and there is interest in bringing marijuana businesses to the Rockford area.

Boulder County health officials are focused on multiunit housing and regulating smoking of cigarettes and marijuana in those areas. They’re also focused on educating young people about marijuana. They’re particularly concerned about a growing trend that high school students think marijuana use is less risky, according to results from the 2011 Youth Risk Behavior Survey.

“Those policies that are in place often do not include marijuana or e-cigarettes, so we’re having to go back and update regulations. ... It’s incredibly time-intensive and painstaking work. It’s challenging, too, to say you can’t use it in public, and also don’t smoke it in your home.”

Shawn Coleman, a marijuana industry consultant and lobbyist, said Boulder’s marijuana industry — as well as most businesses — is a very highly regulated environment. As of early June, the city had 26 marijuana dispensaries. Only six had converted from medical to retail sales, whereas many more dispensaries in Denver had converted to retail sales.

At The Farm, a marijuana dispensary in Boulder, customers show identification at the front counter and receive a chip marked with a number. They can explore several cases of glass accessories used for smoking marijuana or check out the menu board that lists prices and funky names of the drug while they wait for their number to be called.

Customers can smell different marijuana buds and learn about marijuana edibles, such as brownies, chocolate and candy, in a separate room. During a shopping trip with Coleman, employee Randall Tickles explained how to cut up the highly concentrated edibles into individual doses and explained the differences between cannabis sativa and indica plants. Sativa has more of an energizing effect; indica is more often used at night for a more relaxing effect.

Nonchild-resistant containers that hold cannabis and infused products must leave the business in child-resistant bags. Coleman works regularly with the city and the county to advocate and educate about the business.

Page 9 of 9 - “We don’t want minors getting it. We don’t want people to have bad experiences or having dependency issues,” he said. “Those are all things that are bad for business.

“If you remove the stigma, then you can have that conversation. If you view it as like wine snobbery, you can have that conversation. If you view it like a drug you should only use in very narrow circumstances, you never have the conversation and people don’t learn how to (use) it.”

Larry Didier, tobacco programs coordinator for the Winnebago County Health Department, is more concerned about potential legalization of marijuana as opposed to medical marijuana becoming available locally.

He hopes states take time to look at how legalization efforts go in Colorado and Washington state before allowing more access to cannabis. He, too, is concerned about kids having more access to the drug and potential addiction issues.

“It’s an intoxicating and addictive drug,” he said. “The biggest drug problems we have in the U.S. involve tobacco and alcohol. I don’t think we need a third drug that is intoxicating and addictive that becomes legal.”